Uncertain Future for a Nuclear Plant Short on Space to Store Waste

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: May 16, 1999

BUCHANAN, N.Y.—
All the fuel that the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor has ever used since its first chain reaction 26 years ago is here at the bottom of a 40-foot-deep pool about the size of a basketball court.

Plant engineers say the pool, its water made to appear a Ty-D-Bol blue by the boron that smothers further nuclear reactions, is very safe and very clean. But it is also nearly full. Within a few years, the plant will run out of space to store the radioactive waste.

The future of the spent fuel and the plant itself is very much up in the air, caught in a tangle of questions about the economics of nuclear power, the deregulation of the energy industry and the environmental safety of nuclear waste disposal. And the uncertainty has left some neighbors of the plant, 35 miles north of Manhattan, deeply uneasy.

Environmentalists and others who have long opposed the plant would like nothing more than to see it shut down forever. But under one possible outcome, they could end up living next to both an operating nuclear reactor and a nuclear waste storage site. (A near-twin of the reactor, Indian Point 3, is operated by the New York Power Authority. But it is younger and has a bigger pool for spent fuel, so it faces no immediate crisis.)

The plant's owner, Consolidated Edison, says it would like to send the spent fuel more than 2,000 miles west to a proposed storage site near Salt Lake City, but that plan has run into fierce opposition in Utah. The alternative is to keep the spent fuel at the plant here, encasing it in giant sealed containers made of steel and concrete, a process known as dry-cask storage.

Further complicating the picture is the possibility that Con Ed may not be allowed to own Indian Point 2 much longer. Under state energy deregulation rules, the utility has already sold most of its non-nuclear generating plants, and it is awaiting a decision from state regulators on whether it will have to sell the reactor here, too.

If Con Ed keeps Indian Point 2, it could apply for permission to extend the plant's operating license and to build dry-storage casks for its spent nuclear fuel. That would require public hearings and approval from the state's Public Service Commission.

If a private company bought the plant, it would probably have fewer hurdles to clear to keep the reactor going. And some of Indian Point 2's neighbors, realizing that the plant could keep running for decades with even more radioactive fuel kept at the site, find this possibility extremely disturbing.

''I certainly don't think we should do on-site cask storage in order to allow it to continue to operate,'' said Mark Jacobs, director of the Westchester People's Action Coalition, a nonprofit group that opposes Indian Point 2. ''It should be very clear if we do not know what to do with the nuclear waste, we should stop producing it.''

In the salad days of nuclear power, the 1960's, the Federal Government had grand plans for the nation's spent nuclear fuel. A commercial plant, the first of several planned, was built near Buffalo to reprocess uranium and plutonium for reuse in reactors. But virgin uranium turned out to be cheaper, and President Jimmy Carter, concerned that the spent fuel could be turned into nuclear weapons, banned the process.

Then the Government promised that by 1998, it would have a place to bury the waste permanently. But now, the Energy Department is saying that site will not be ready for at least 11 years. So scores of nuclear plants around the country will soon find that they, too, have run out of room to store spent fuel.

Several plants have already put their fuel into dry-cask storage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission routinely approves such a step, but state public utility commissions can veto cask construction if they think the expenditure is unwise.

And opponents of nuclear power have used political pressure to prevent dry-storage casks from being built at some sites, hoping that this pressure will force the plants to shut down.

But then deregulation came to the energy industry. New York and about a dozen other states are encouraging private companies to provide electricity, hoping that the competition will mean lower prices for consumers. Those states are either forcing utilities to sell their generating plants or are considering doing so. Nuclear plants are not the easiest properties to sell. But while it costs more to generate nuclear power than it does to generate electricity from water, gas or coal, a private company that can buy a reactor cheaply enough can still be competitive.

Indian Point 2 could flourish in a deregulated market, said Neil S. Carns, senior vice president for nuclear operations at Con Ed. He said he could foresee keeping the plant open 20 years beyond 2013, when its current license expires.

But to keep the plant running, Indian Point 2 needs more storage space for spent fuel.

''It's certainly a major point of vulnerability for Con Ed,'' said Edward A. Smeloff, executive director of the Energy Project at Pace University Law School in White Plains, ''if they have no place to take the fuel and they have significant local opposition to siting a dry-storage facility.''